Quote

What I have in mind when I start to write could fit inside an acorn-an acorn, moreover, that rarely if ever grows into an oak. Write fiction and you relinquish reason. You start with an acorn and you end up with a mackerel.

Philip Roth

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Philip Roth
Age: 85 †
Born: 1933
Born: March 18
Died: 2018
Died: May 22
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Philip Milton Roth
Reason
Rarely
Ever
Fit
Writing
Fiction
Mackerel
Mind
Inside
Acorn
Grows
Relinquish
Start
Acorns
Write
Oaks
Ends
Moreover

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Everything dictated silence and self-control but I couldn't restrain myself and spoke my mind.
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It's the little questions from women about tappets that finally push men over the edge.
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Each book starts from ashes really. I don't feel that I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell or that story to tell, but I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living.
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I came to New York and in only hours, New York did what it does to people: awakened the possibilities. Hope breaks out.
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There’s no remaking reality... Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes. There’s no other way.
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The book can't compete with the screen. It couldn't compete beginning with the movie screen. It couldn't compete with the television screen and it can't compete with the computer screen I don't think. And now we have all those screens so against all those screens I think the book can't measure up.
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Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear.Of course no childhood is without its terrors, yet I wonder if I would have been a less frightened boy if Lindbergh hadn't been president or if I hadn't been the offspring of Jews.
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The secret to living in the rush of the world with a minimum of pain is to get as many people as possible to string along with your delusions.
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Doctor doctor, what do you say, lets put the id back in yid
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Let's hope the first comes first.
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There's something every woman wants, and that's a man to blame.
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He was no more, freed from being, entering into nowhere without even knowing it. Just as he'd feared from the start.
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'Haunted by the past' is a commonplace phrase because it's a commonplace experience. Even if one is not, strictly speaking, 'haunted', the past is perpetually with one in the present, and the longer it grows and the further it recedes the stronger its presence seems to become.
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I work just as much as I always worked. And I can't explain the fact that there have been a series of books coming rather regularly out of me. I work most days and if you work most days and you get at least a page done a day, then at the end of the year you have 365. So the pages accumulate and then I publish the books.
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Nothing lasts and yet nothing passes either, and nothing passes just because nothing lasts.
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Fear tends to manifest itself much more quickly than greed, so volatile markets tend to be on the downside. In up markets, volatility tends to gradually decline.
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When I was a child... I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, 'Momma, do we believe in winter?'
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I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and turn it around again.
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In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees
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Literature isn't a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off the belief it inspires is what counts.
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